The word 'critical" has three meanings which are dangerous, important, and disapproving. The purpose of this blog is to examine important or over-looked cultural, political, artistic, or historical issues of our time. Also, this blog is intended to be educational.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Neglected Important Artists, No. 32

Geovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Geovanni Girolamo Savoldo,also calledGirolamo da Brescia(bornc.1480,Brescia, Republic ofVenice[Italy]; diedc.1548, Venice?) was a painter of the Brescian school whose style
is marked by a quiet lyricism. Although his work was largely forgotten after
his death, interest in Savoldo was revived in the 20th century and his work
gained a place alongside that of other HighRenaissancepainters.

The
first records of Savoldo’s life show he was inParmain 1506 and was recorded in the guild atFlorencein 1508. Little else is known of his personal life except
that he may have leftVenice, where he spent most of his
life, to live inMilanfor a few years and that he had a Flemish wife through whom
he may have made Northern contacts. Scholars have found it difficult to
pinpoint Savoldo’s training and artistic influences because his style changed
very little during his career. His preoccupation with clearly defined shapes in
light suggests he was influenced byCima da Conegliano, who also
used light with quiet exactitude and who may have also been based inParmain 1506. Savoldo also may have been influenced by Flemish
painters.

The first records of Savoldo’s life show he was in Parma in 1506 and was recorded in the guild
at Florence in
1508. Little else is known of his personal life except that he may have left Venice, where he spent most of his life, to live in Milan for a few years and that he had a
Flemish wife through whom he may have made Northern contacts. Scholars have
found it difficult to pinpoint Savoldo’s training and artistic influences
because his style changed very little during his career. His preoccupation with
clearly defined shapes in light suggests he was influenced by Cima da Conegliano, who also used light with quiet exactitude
and who may have also been based in Parma in 1506. Savoldo also may have been
influenced by Flemish painters.

Savoldo’s
use of deep, rich color gives his paintings dramatic tonal values. The influence of Giorgione can be felt in the
dreamy, poeticized treatment in such works as Portrait of aKnight(c. 1525). Savoldo
defined his luminous, meticulously detailed figures by setting them against
darkened, twilit skies, a technique that culminated in Saint Matthew and theAngel(1530–35) and St. Mary Magdalene Approaching
the Sepulchre (c. 1535). The portrait long
known as Gaston de
Foix (c. 1532), but no longer identified with
that duke of Nemours, attempted to give a sense of three-dimensionality by
depicting a figure wearing a suit of armor reflected in a mirror.

Savoldo
liked to depict unusual effects of light, and he paid particular attention to
reflected or nocturnally lit scenes. His output was small (only about 40
paintings), and he had little influence on the course of Venetian painting, from which he had always
stood somewhat aloof. For centuries after his death his work was typically
either ignored or wrongly attributed to other artists, but in the early 20th
century it was revived byartcritics who grouped him, for the first time, with the High
Renaissance artists. Exhibitions of his paintings followed, and a 1990
retrospective of his work, held in Brescia and Frankfurt am Main, continued to
revitalize his reputation.